Peter Oussoren, a Grade 12 geography teacher at King's Christian Collegiate is leading a month-long student trip to Kenya, East Africa. The group of 9 students and two adults leave Sunday, June 23

One of the students, Erin Homer, is an aspiring journalist, who has previously had articles in the Oakville Beaver, and is documenting the trip for Beaver readers.

While in Kenya students will be working on their field studies units, conducting research and meeting and interviewing people involved in their areas of study.

Topics students will be exploring in addition to the Kenyan landscape and culture include: education for vulnerable children, community efforts to lower HIV/AIDS rates, the pros and cons of microfinance programs, refugees, water-borne diseases, water purification methods, elephant conservation efforts, food security, causes of povery and a comparison of urbanization in Nairobi and Toronto.

Students will also spend time at a rural health clinic, a children’s home in Nairobi called New Life, spend five days at Mulli Children's Family and visit a safari in both Naivasha and the Masai Mara (Serengeti) — Peter Oussoren

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Over the last few weeks of school, I heard many people buzzing about how soon exams and summer vacation had crept up on them.

Exams and summer vacation don’t seem like such enormous events when you’re heading to Kenya for a month shortly after school ends.

For the past few months, I have met in a group of nine students and two teachers to prepare for this trip.

We will be in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, for the majority of our stay, but we will be very busy with lots of trips outside of the city, too.

We will spend time in the Masai Mara, help out at an orphanage called New Life Children’s Home, camp in Naivasha, do some exploring in Nakuru, visit an elephant orphanage and giraffe feeding centre, and we will also spend some time at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) headquarted in Nairobi.

One of our longest excursions will be to the Charles Mulli Children’s Family Home, which was set up by a man who is guardian of more than 2,000 children from the streets of Nairobi and Eldoret. Certainly these last few weeks

leading up to our departure on June 23 have been full of anticipation and — above all — excitement.

While the 16-hour plane flight won’t be the most exhilarating experience, we look forward to the experiences we will have there.

This is very evident as several peers have already created Facebook and chat groups for the trip.

A question on everyone’s minds is how to prepare for one month in Africa. At this point, all we can do is just get the packing done and show up to the airport.

There’s no way to really understand what we will see or learn there, until we are actually seeing it or learning it, but we will do it as a group.

While we are there, we will be researching topics such as water treatment, animal conservation, and microfinance.

We will be interviewing significant people who work in our areas of study, and we’ll be looking at situations firsthand.

I can’t wait for this life-changing experience, and I can tell all of my peers are just as excited as I am.

For frequent updates throughout our trip, check out www.KCCkenya.blogspot.com and stay tuned to the Oakville Beaver for more on this developing story.